On being a neurologist in Italy at the time of the COVID-19 outbreak

Italy is facing its fifth week of crisis due to the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, with affected patients and deaths near to 70,000 and 6,000, respectively,(1)numbers that are increasing every day. Whether government imposition of quarantines, travel bans, and lockdown throughout the country will have effect in the next weeks in limiting the spreading of this disease has still to be seen. Meanwhile, a great spirit of sacrifice is required to health care personnel, and authorities have to manage resource allocation to rapidly increase the number of intensive care beds to assist patients with COVID-19.(2)Although operating rooms and a number of wards have been turned into dedicated intensive units, beds and resources are hardly sufficient to satisfy the needs of so many simultaneously critically ill patients.(3,4)Notably, among infected people, about 10% are health workers, and their number is increasing, also due to the scarcity of efficacious protective measures.